Left, Right, and Centered

I contemplated taking the day off in mourning.  If you’re a progressive, it sure looks like we got our electoral asses kicked yesterday.  But there are low murmurs of life emenating from beneath the rubble.

In the first place, it’s probably true what they say, that all politics is local.  Losses in the Virginia and New Jersey governors races have the appearane of a referendum on Obama.  A look at the exit polls suggests that the results were more about the states’ economies than the president.  It’s still a bitter pill.

Another happy outcome was the loss by the third party whackadoodle in upstate New York supported by Sarah Palin and a distinguished cadre of right wing extremists.

In Maine, gay marriage suffered something like its thirtieth consecutive defeat in various state referendums.  At the same time, in conservative North Carolina, Chapel Hill elected an openly gay mayor, and at the same time, in even more conservative Texas, Houston’s mayoral race, including another openly gay candidate, will be decided in a run-off next month.

Back in Maine, where they apparently seem to care about who sets up housekeeping with whom, they seem less concerned about who smokes what.  Maine’s voters approved licensing medical marijuana shops.  If the Justice Department dictum that such operations won’t be harrassed by the federal government holds up, this is another step in the right direction.  Even better, in Breckenridge, Colorado snowboarders won’t even have to pretend to have terminal cancer or glaucoma to light up a doobie on the slopes.  The voters there overwhelmingly approved decriminalizing possession of marijuana.

So, upon further review, yesterday’s results aren’t quite as depressing as they appeared on first glance.  Still, the president’s mandate is beginning to look a mythical creature at this point.  Witness yesterday’s declaration by Harry Reid that the health care reform bill might just have to wait until 2010, roughly translated into, “Don’t hold your breath.”

I might still have to take the day off.

BW